NAB Cup Review - West Coast 117 def Essendon 82

The story of the first NAB Cup game of 2010 was Nic Naitanui (115 pts). He had a massive 2nd quarter, tackled like a great and was a Dream team god, but I don’t think the question is about picking him up at $232,400, but what it could do with Dean Cox – who wasn’t playing. The Eagles will surely get behind their high draft pick and surely he is a franchise player for this year and the future. Will the fact he can play limit some time for Cox? Should we go with Nic Naitanui as our second ruckman?

The Eagles midfield is something that has excited us as Dream Team coaches. There are plenty of blokes who are ‘cheap’ with a chance to cement a spot in there. Chris Masten (93 pts) and Sam Butler (74 pts) did themselves no harm… where as, we didn’t see as much from blokes like Bradd Dalziell (48 pts) and Brad Ebert (63 pts) who are chances to find themselves in the mix. For those wanting to risk Daniel Kerr (75 pts), you wouldn’t have been disheartened by his performance. He can still find it and is certain to go up in value. Matt Priddis (68 pts) attracted a bit of a tag – still got a decent amount of possessions, just too many handballs.

Some of us  would have disappointed with the efforts of Scott Selwood (44 pts) but we have got to remember this is pre-season. We will get to see him in action next week. And that goes for a lot of players. Who know’s what will happen? Maybe some of us can get tricked into Mark Nicoski (63 pts) too. There will be plenty who think that he is a steal at $216,700.

We got to see Mark McVeigh (82 pts) scored very well for his price of $268,400. Are you willing to take him even though he is suspended for Round 1? He is too cheap to pass up for me! He looked to spend a lot of time in the midfield and played pretty loose, not so much as the ‘run with’ player that we saw in 2009.

It was dissapointing that Luke Shuey (49 pts) and Brad Sheppard (30 pts) were benched as the ’substitute’ players right from the start. I guess this might show a bit of where they could be in the pecking order at the Eagles. Also that Jake Melksham was left out of the team due to illness. It would have been great to see him play.

While I am disappointed that Essendon lost, there are a whole heap of Eagles that are a chance to make my final Dream team line up before the first bouncedown in Round One.